Road Trip Necedah

Last week Michelle and I made a pretty big change. We decided to take my truck in and buy a new car. This is kind of a big deal because I have been driving trucks for twenty some years and not owned a car, other then Michelle's cars, since my first vehicle, but I decided it was time to do more to help the environment and my truck was only getting 15 MPG so it was time to trade it in for something a bit more fuel efficient.

So I bought myself a Honda Insight hybrid. For day to day I do not drive all that much, between 30 to 40 miles to work and back, but since I like to go out to photograph nature in a variety of different habitats I do put on a few miles doing road trips. So this weekend I took the new car on its first road trip to Necedah NWR in Wisconsin. Everything went perfect, the weather was nice, there was a good amount of wildlife to photograph, and the new car, pictured next to the Necedah sign above, worked great. The trip was 384.4 miles round trip and I used 9.1 gallons of gas, which means that I got over 42 MPG.

Since this is a nature blog and not a car blog I also took some pictures of wildlife while I was there. I was excited to see a pair of endangered whooping cranes out in the field in front of the observation tower, unfortunately they were too far away to get any good pics.

I did get some better pics of the red headed woodpeckers. They are quite common in Necedah. This is probably due to all of the dead wood that the staff leaves in the refuge. Red headed woodpeckers thrive in habitats where there is a lot of dead wood around. They use cracks and crevices in the dead wood to cache their food, this would include seeds, nuts, and even live insects.

Eastern kingbirds are also pretty common in Necedah. They can usually be found hunting for flying insects in the open fields.

Gray catbirds are usually more secretive. You are much more likely to hear one then you are to see one as they typically stay in shrubs or brush piles repeating their distinctive call.

Necedah is also a great place to photograph butterflies. It is one of the best places in the world to find the endangered Karner blue butterfly. The Karner is a sub species of the Melissa blue that is found mostly in the Great Lakes region. The Karner blue caterpillar is very particular and will only eat the lupine plant. As the amount of lupine decreases, due to habitat destruction and fire suppression, so does the population of the Karner blue. They have already disappeared from many areas where they used to be quite common.

Monarchs, on the other hand are quite common. They are probably the most recognized butterfly in the world. They really love blazing star, which are blooming all around Necedah at this time. They need a lot of nectar because they will begin migrating south soon.

Another butterfly that was partaking of nectar from the wildflowers of Necedah was the eastern tiger swallowtail. The eastern tiger swallowtail is common though out most of the eastern United States. It can be confused with the Canadian tiger swallowtail, which is a bit smaller then the eastern tiger swallowtail but other then that they pretty much look the same, in the northern states where their ranges cross over.

Whooping Cranes

Here are some more pics of the two whooping cranes that I photographed flying over Necedah, NWR last October. The whooping crane, or whooper as it is frequently called, is found only in North America. It is the tallest bird in North America standing at almost 5 feet tall with a wingspan of over seven feet.

They got their name from the whooping call that the cranes make during the courtship process. Whoopers are ground nesters. They typically nest in marshy areas in around 10 inches of water to help prevent attacks from ground predators like fox and coyote. The nest is usually hidden in stands of bulrush or cattail. When they are born the young whoopers are flightless but can swim away from danger if necessary.
Due to habitat loss and hunting the whooping crane was brought to the brink of extinction. In 1941 there were only 15 wild whoopers left in North America. The whooper was put on the endangered species list and there are now several organizations that are working with the government to help increase the population of these birds.
Currently the wild whooper population stands at around 325. The bulk of the birds are the ancestors of the last flock of 15. They nest up in Wood Buffalo National Park, in Canada, and winter in Aransas NWR in southeast Texas. To try and prevent the complete loss of the whooper population, if something catastrophic where to happen to the remaining wild flock, a second flock was created using captive born birds. These birds are raised in Wisconsin, mostly Necedah, and using ultra light aircraft the bird are lead down to south Florida during migration. After their first migration the birds find their own way back north so that they can migrate on their own after that. This eastern migratory flock currently has around 80 birds. Both flocks have been growing around an average of about 4% each year.

Skywatch Friday

Welcome to Skywatch Friday, or Skywatch Thursday here in the Central Time Zone of North America. In my opinion there are few things that are more wondrous then a clear blue sky during the late Autumn here in the part of the world that I live in, but this past weekend I did find something even more wondrous.

A clear blue sky during the late Autumn with a pair of endangered whooping cranes flying across. I spent a day out at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge this weekend and was rewarded with a flyby from a pair of these magnificent birds. In 1941 there were only 16 whoopers left in the world since that time, with the help of a captive breeding program at the Necedah NWR, their population has increased approximately 5% per year so that there are now around 500 birds with about half of those in captivity.

Necedah Dragonflies and Damselflies

Well I am back from my shorebird workshop in South Dakota. I had a pretty good experience. We spotted 17 different shorebird species and I was able to identify most of them from pictures at the end of the seminar. We got up pretty close to some of the birds so I have some nice pics to post and I will also share some of the info that I learned. The biggest excitement of the weekend for me though was a burrowing owl. I have photographed burrowing owls in south western Minnesota, last year and in southern California many years ago but it is a raptor that I do not often see so I visited the field where it has been spending some time on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I have a lot of pics to go through, plus I am currently still posting pics that I took in June so it might be a little while before I get them on line.

For now I have one last post from our trip to Necedah NWR in June. This time it is dragonfly and damselfly.
Damselflies are kind of like skippers in the butterfly world or sparrows in birding, they are small, hard to photograph and difficult to ID. I believe the damsel above is a citrine forktail. The citrine forktail is the only damsel in the area that is a yellowish color with spots dividing each section of the abdomen.

The next damsel appears to be a spreadwing, due to its open wing pattern while it is perched. Due to the bronze color on its thorax and the green shoulder stripe I am going to say that this is a lyre-tipped spreadwing. What is more interesting to me is that if you look closely at the head you will notice that the damsel seems to be eating a small grasshopper.
Away we go from the confusing and hard to identify damselflies to the confusing and hard to identify female meadowhawks. Female meadowhawks will often be the same color as the males, red in most cases, but they can also be a yellow color like the one above. It is very difficult to distinguish between the females of several types of meadowhawks so instead of trying I will list several types that I am pretty sure that it is not. The face is not white enough for a white face and since the legs are black it is most definitely not an autumn meadowhawk, which have yellow legs. There does not look like enough color in the wings to be a saffron so that only leaves us with about 4 or 5 other types.
This dragon is definitely a dot-tailed whiteface, which I have photographed on numerous occasions in many different locations.
Finally we have a female twelve-spotted skimmer, which is another very common dragon. You can tell that she is female because she does not have white spots on her wings. You can tell that she is not a female widow skimmer because the yellow dots on the abdomen form a straight line not a jagged line like the widows does.

Hopefully my IDs are correct but if you think I have made a mistake, except on the last 2 which I am sure about, then please leave a comment and let me know. That is one of the ways in which I continue to learn.

Birding at Necedah NWR

We also did a bit of birding while we were out at Necedah NWR. Since we were a few hours east of home we got to see, and photograph, some birds that I do not see very often even though the Twin Cities falls with in their summer range.
The field sparrow is fairly common, during the summer time, both in Wisconsin and back at home, although their numbers are declining.

The eastern towhee is not a bird that I see and get to photograph very frequently. In fact I actually have more pictures of the spotted towhee, which I took when I was down at the Bosque del Apache in January of 2007, then I do the eastern towhee. Both the spotted and eastern towhee were considered the same species until 1995. The spotted range through out the western half of the US while the eastern range through out the eastern portion.
The black-billed cuckoo is another bird that I do not see very often. I am sure that there are black-billed cuckoos close to home but from what I have read they are secretive and not often seen.
Black-billed cuckoo eat fruit, seeds, and large insects, especially caterpillars. It is not good to find a caterpillar eating bird in the area where the main population of endangered Karner butterflies exists. However the Karner larva are quite small and the cuckoo spend most of their time hunting for caterpillars in trees and thick brush instead of lupine fields. This is good news for the Karner blue and bad news for the red-spotted purple.
One of the birds that we photographed last year on our trip to Necedah that I was hoping to see again this year is the red-headed woodpecker. We did get some looks and a few pics of the red-heads but not as good as the ones that we got last year.
Necedah is great territory for red-headed woodpeckers. There are several parts of the the park which are covered with old growth forest. Trees that fall or die in these woods are left to decompose naturally. These dead and dying trees are filled with nooks, holes and crannies which are important to the red-heads. The red-headed woodpecker is one of only a few types of woodpeckers know to cache food for future use. They will hide seeds, nuts, and even live insects in spaces in the trees, insects are often wedged in tight so that they can not escape. That is why a lot of dead wood is important to these birds. Unfortunately in too many places dead trees are removed which makes it difficult for red-heads to find suitable habitat and why the population of the red-headed woodpecker is on the decline.

Necedah Butterflies

We did find some other butterflies at Necedah NWR also.

Like this sulphur butterfly.
It is difficult to tell the difference between clouded sulphur and the orange sulphur unless they have their wings open, which is rare for sulphurs when they are perched. I believe that these are clouded though.
We also found some pearl crescent butterfly.
Crescents are a part of the Nymphalidae family which are often called the bush-footed butterflies. They are called this because of their front pair of legs are shorter and covered with short hairs. The Mymphalidae family includes longwings, fritillaries, crescents, checkerspots among other types of butterflies. There are also seven other subfamilies that are part of the Nymphalidae family.
The red-spotted purple is a member of the Nymphalidae sub family Limenitidinae.
The red-spotted purple is actually the same species as the white admiral. The white admiral is more of a solid black with a heavy white band on both sets of wings as well as red spots on the hindwing.

Necedah Viceroy

While we were out at Necedah looking for Karner blue butterflies we spotted this butterfly perched on a bush.
I wasn't planning to stop to photograph it, since monarchs are pretty common, but then a bird flew across the road so we stopped to see what it was.
We never did get a good look at the bird, let alone a pic, but while we were stopped I decided to take a shot of the butterfly. As I got a better look at it through the view finder I realized that this was a viceroy butterfly and not a monarch.
The viceroy looks similar to the monarch except that it is typically smaller and has a black postmedian band which crosses the hindwing, look at the three pictures above in comparison to the monarch pictured below.
It is believed that its similarity to the monarch, in looks, is a type of a defense mechanism for the viceroy. Because the monarch feeds on the milkweed plant, while in its larval state, it is very distasteful to most predators. Birds who try to eat a monarch will usually avoid them after the experience. Since the viceroy looks similar in appearance often times it will also be avoided even though it does not feed on milkweed.

Necedah Karner Melissa Blue

Near the end of June Michelle and I took a trip out to central Wisconsin to visit the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. Necedah NWR is located about two hours east of the Twin Cites and is known mostly for the Whooping Crane project which teaches young, captive raised, whoopers to migrate south through the use of an ultra light aircraft. However most of the whooper action takes place in the fall. Our main purpose for this visit was to try and photograph the endangered Karner blue butterfly.
The Karner blue is a sub-species of the Melissa blue, a blue butterfly that is fairly common and widespread through out the western United States. The Karner blue is found only in isolated pockets in the Great Lakes region, including the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and New York.
The issue with the Karner blue is the dependence of the the larval Karner on the wild lupine plant. Lupine is a wild flower that grows in sandy soil in open clearings, like pine barrens and oak savannas. Because of development and fire suppression, wild fires prevent the encroachment of woods and help to open up space that the lupine needs to grow, there is less lupine growing out in the wild.
The Karner blue in its larval, caterpillar, stage exclusively eats the wild lupine leaves. So as the amount of wild lupine decreases so does the number of Karner blue butterflies. Karners are no longer regularly found in Iowa, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, or Ontario where there were recorded populations in the past.
There is usually two broods of Karner per year. The first brood hatch from their eggs in April, the eggs are laid by the second brood of the prior year. They have 4 larval stages, instars, before they pupate, form a chrysalis. They usually take flight between the middle of May to the middle of June. The lifespan of the adult butterfly form is only about 3 to 5 days. During that short time they need to mate and the eggs which will become the second brood. The second brood usually takes flight between the middle of July to the middle of August. The second brood then lays its eggs which overwinter and hatch the following April to become the first brood of that year.
Although there are different places in Wisconsin, including Crex Meadows, Necedah NWR has the largest know population in the world. When we visited in late June I expected to see fields filled with blooming lupine, like I was seeing at Dodge Nature Center, but the lupine that we found seemed to be growing in patches mixed in with other wild flowers and grasses. Despite this fact we still managed to find several Karner blues. Karners are difficult to find, identify and photograph because like most of the other blues they do not get to be very large, their wingspan is usually only around one inch.

A trip to Necedah NWR instead of Cape May

I had thought about going to the Cape May Autumn Convention this weekend but I decided against it. First off this would prolly be the last nice weekend at home and I was not sure I wanted to give that up and spend half my time flying and driving and in lectures at a convention. Second is the whole feral cat issue, Laura Erickson had a great post about the issue, which made it some what of a moral dilemma. So I decided that I would take some field trips around home instead. As it turns out it was a good call because, from what I have read, the weather at Cape May for most of the weekend was pretty bad, meanwhile here at home we had a gorgeous fall weekend.

Since the weather forecast for the weekend was looking so good I talked Michelle into going on a road trip to Necedah NWR in Wisconsin on Saturday. Necedah is popular for birders and naturalists particularly for the whooping crane project and the endangered karner blue butterfly. I had wanted to visit Necedah earlier in the year, when the karner blues were around, however with everything else I did this year I did not get a chance. I figured that the karners would be gone at this time of the year but I was still hoping to see a whooper. We saw whoopers down in Aransas NWR in Texas a couple of years ago but they were very far away and it was impossible to get even a mediocre photo. The Necedah website lists weekly numbers of waterfowl and cranes and the previous week they had listed 31 whoopers in the park so even though it would be a long shot I knew that it might be possible.

I let Michelle sleep in, the least that I could do since I was dragging her around the country side again, so we arrived at Necedah at around 11:00 am. This was our first visit to Necedah so we were not sure where the best place would be to spot wildlife so we just picked a road and began to drive. The road took us through a wooded area with a lot of dead and downed trees. It was not long before we spotted an immature red-headed woodpecker.
Juvenile red-heads have gray heads and black bars on white secondaries. As they progress from juvenile to immature status you can begin to see some red on the head.
Red-headed woodpeckers live in the eastern half of the US and south eastern Canada. They migrate from the northern parts of their range and spend the winter typically in Texas. When we visited we saw that there were still quite a few red-heads, both immature and adults, that had not left yet.

There were also quite a few adult red-headed woodpeckers. Red-heads are the most omnivorous of the woodpeckers. They will burrow into trees to get bugs or catch them in the air or on the ground. They will also eat seeds, berries, nuts, fruit, bird eggs, hatchlings or mice.Red heads are one of the few woodpeckers that are known to store food and the only type that will sometimes cover it up with bark. They hide seeds and nuts in cracks in wood, as shown above, and will even store live grasshoppers by wedging them into a tight crevice where they can't escape.Recent data shows that the numbers of red-heads is declining. This is most likely due to habitat loss and people clearing out dead trees. Red-heads need these dead trees for nesting so it is important that we leave some areas in their natural states. Necedah NWR had plenty of dead trees so it was perfect habitat for red-heads. After a while the ecosystem transitioned from old and dying deciduous woodlands to prairie. There was a short hiking trail so I decided to stop and get a bit of exercise. The trail was supposed to go through some wetlands and there was even a short boardwalk but things were pretty dry so there was very little water in sight and not many birds either. I did spot a white-throated sparrow in the brush.I got back to the car and we continued north. We kept looking for the pools and lakes that, according to the last weeks numbers on the website, held thousands of ducks, but all we found were hunters getting ready for the season. Finally we came to two large pools. We did see some ducks, geese, and swans but most where on the opposite side of the pools, which was to far away to get any pics. There was, however, a lesser yellowlegs on the shore on one side of the road that was not too far away.On the other side of the road a lone great blue heron caught himself some lunch. After the pools we continued to the trail where you can see the karner blue butterflies during the summer. They are found in this habitat because of the wild lupine that grows there is the only known food for their caterpillar state. Even though I did not think that there would be any karners left I decided to walk the trail anyway, after all I did see a monarch and a sulfur flying around.

I did not find any karners, all of the lupine was already dead, but I did find a ruby meadowhawk.On the way out of the park we spotted a red-tailed hawk.He decided that he did not like the look of our car, not sure what problem he had with Honda, so he took off and began to circle higher on the thermals. We never did get to see a whooper but I am definitely planning to go back next summer, prolly in early June. Hopefully on that trip I will get some shots of the Karner butterflies and maybe some pictures of juvenile red-headed woodpeckers.